Week 3 of 6 A certificate earned by practice, not lecture

Stop renegotiating your contract one favor at a time.

Not a clause-by-clause lecture. Ten coached steward conversations, a live investigation, your own documents cross-examined, and your company's contract audited before you leave.

The textbook is a fictional plant's contract: decades of layered language, unreconciled side agreements, problems that cost real employers. Read it before you arrive. Argue it, grieve it, investigate under it, defend it all week. By Friday you can hold the line without creating the next grievance.

Apply for the founding cohort

Cohorts are capped at 12. Applications reviewed as received.

Dates
November 16–20, 2026
Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Location
Tulsa, Oklahoma
In person, five days. Travel and lodging run well below the NYC-based alternatives.
Tuition
$2,800 this week, all materials included
Or $15,000 for all six weeks and the full Certificate in Applied Labor Relations.
1:6
Instructor to learner
12
Seats per cohort
40+
Hours of live, in-person instruction in this week alone
70%
Of class time spent in simulation, role-play, and coached practice
10
Coached steward conversations, every one debriefed against a rubric
45
Years and 10,000+ campaigns behind the people teaching it
Who this week is for

The people the steward finds first

The contract is not administered in the LR office. It is administered at the line, one conversation at a time, by whoever is standing there. Week 3 is built for the people standing there.

Front-line and mid-level managers
Running crews under a CBA every day, saying yes and no a dozen times a shift — each one a precedent in the making.
Managers at newly organized locations
The union just won, the first contract is new, and everyone — including the steward — is still testing where the lines are. What you do now sets the pattern for a decade.
Managers who just inherited a union shop
New to a plant with thirty years of somebody else's decisions baked into "how we do it here" — and no map of which ones bind.
HR generalists who own grievances
The person the grievance form lands on, who needs the answer to help at arbitration instead of testifying against the company.
Senior HR and LR leaders
Building a contract-administration bench, and tired of learning about new past practices from the union's opening statement.
Enterprise LR departments
Send a plant's whole leadership team and they calibrate together — same standards, same lines, same answers on the floor.
Prerequisite
None. Week 3 stands on its own and earns its own credential — the LRI Certificate in Contract Administration.
The week

Argue it first. Then learn the rule that settles it.

Most sessions open with your gut call — a cold open, a table vote, a jury verdict — then faculty close the gaps revealed during the debrief. Pre-work lands three weeks out, so class time is for doing. Every day opens with a no-notes retrieval huddle and closes with a written reflection.

Monday
Day 1
The contract lens installed
Tables argue three floor moments cold — the reverse-my-call demand, the fairness appeal, the push to bargain a management right — then faculty close the gaps: the contract is the compromise; administer it, don't renegotiate it on the floor. A worksheet race through the sample contract. A provision with two defensible readings, argued and voted before a single interpretation rule is taught. A ten-provision tournament. Your first coached steward conversations, and a sealed baseline diagnostic you will not see again until Friday.
Tuesday
Day 2
Past practice, before it binds
Tables get a decades-old workplace practice cold and argue whether it binds, then re-score their answer against the four standards from Managing the Union Shop. Three past-practice steward conversations minutes later, each built on the sample contract. A workshop on how contracts erode one concession at a time. Grievance answers written under three simple rules. An assessed conversation with written individual feedback.
Wednesday
Day 3
Grievance handling and investigation
A Step 1 grievance meeting with the steward escalating. A termination file argued to a jury vote — uphold, reduce, or overturn — before the 7 tests of just cause get their names. A live investigation with faculty playing the accused and the hostile witness. Reprimands drafted and peer-torn.
Thursday
Day 4
Tested under fire — then your own contract
The week's work gets examined the way the real world examines it: live, adversarial, and in front of the room. Then a new manager's brutal first month, run live. The afternoon turns the audit on your actual CBA, with 1:1 faculty coaching.
Friday
Day 5
Six stations, then certificates
A rotating day-in-the-life capstone: six stations, every one scored against a faculty rubric. The growth check against Monday's sealed answers. A closing debrief that ties the week together. Certificates.
The contract is the curriculum

A sample contract with thirty years of history

A full collective bargaining agreement, written for this program the way real agreements actually accumulate: language layered across decades of negotiations, side agreements that drifted from the text, practices that drifted further, and problems the parties stopped seeing years ago — inside a fictional plant under real operational pressure.

You read it before you arrive. You argue it, grieve it, investigate under it, and defend it all week. Friday afternoon the contract gives up its secrets — mapped against what the cohort caught, and what it missed.

Problems employers paid for
Every problem in the document traces to a dispute pattern that cost a real employer real money. None of them is labeled. Finding them is the work.
What it doesn't say matters
Some of the most expensive language in any agreement is the language that is not there. The week trains you to hear silence — and to know what it costs.
Clean language counts too
Plenty of the contract is well drafted, and knowing what not to flag is half the skill. Crying wolf on sound language costs you.
Some mistakes cap a score outright
A small number of errors end a station's score no matter what else went right — the same way they end arguments in the real world. We do not publish which ones.
The Friday capstone — six scored stations

One rotating morning built like a manager's hardest day: the conversations, the documents, and the judgment calls, back to back. Every station is scored. None of them is announced in advance.

Outcomes

What you walk out able to do

Read any situation through the contract.
The floor question, the favor, the schedule change — the contract answers first, and you administer the compromise instead of renegotiating it.
Hold the line without wrecking the relationship.
Say no to the favor, the side deal, and the "just this once" — ten coached steward conversations deep by Friday.
Catch past practice before it forms.
The four standards, how practices harden by accident, and the four ways to break one that already has.
Run an investigation that holds up.
Including the hostile witness — and write discipline an arbitrator will respect.
Write grievance answers that help you later.
Brief, cited, conceding nothing — because your answer is evidence at the next arbitration.
Audit your own contract before someone else does.
Erosion risks, dangerous ambiguities, expensive silences — found, ranked, and planned against, on your actual CBA.
The five lenses

We teach you what to see, not just what to know

Experienced practitioners process a situation differently than novices do. We have identified twelve of those mental representations. Five are scored all week in Week 3.

The Contract Lens
The contract is the compromise. Every floor situation gets read through it first — and never renegotiated one favor at a time.
Power Distance
Manage the invisible authority gaps in both directions — a steward with political weight, an employee afraid of your title.
The Connection Model
Be open, understand, support — the arc under every steward conversation, especially the ones that start hostile.
The Political Lens
The steward is an elected official doing the job their members chose them for. Read the politics; don't take the bait.
The Hero Assumption
Assume positive intent. The steward is not attacking you — they are representing legitimate concerns through the process the contract provides.
Scored, not mentioned
The five lenses are tracked per participant across the assessed conversations and the capstone, on a written scorecard you take home.
What comes home with you

Work product, not a binder

Everything you build in Week 3 is usable on Monday. That is also what makes this easy for your manager to approve.

An audit of your actual contract
Top five erosion risks, three underused management rights, two dangerous ambiguities, and the silences — with a one-page corrective action plan, coached by faculty before you leave.
The full contract audit assignment
The between-session assignment finishes the job on your own CBA — an action plan per priority, due before the next module and countersigned by your manager.
Job aids that live in a pocket
The contract lens card, the four-standard past-practice test, the 7 tests of just cause, and the investigation checklist.
A steward playbook for your contract
The ten conversations, customized to your CBA's language — what to say, what never to say, and where your agreement's own traps are.
Individual written coaching notes
Named feedback on your assessed conversations, your written grievance answers, your investigation file, and your capstone stations.
Reinforcement that does not stop Friday
A 48-hour recap and application challenge, a virtual cohort discussion at one week, peer coaching huddles, an accountability partner, and a refresher at two to three months.
How this is different

Nobody else teaches this from your side of the table

Cornell's ILR School and Michigan State's School of Human Resources and Labor Relations both run respected labor relations certificates. Both are built to serve union and management representatives in the same classroom, and both are delivered online. Neither trains the management side of day-to-day contract administration as its own discipline. That is not a knock on either school. It is a description of a gap that has been open for decades.

LRI Certificate in Applied Labor Relations Cornell ILR · eCornell Michigan State HRLR Single-skill workshops
PerspectiveManagement side only, every hour of itNeutral by design — union and management in the same classroomNeutral by designVaries
FormatIn person, five days a week, roughly 70% practiceOnline through eCornell, largely self-pacedDelivered via Zoom, short sessions across weeksOne to two days, lecture-led
Live instruction200+ hours across the certificate — 40+ in Week 3 aloneRoughly 50 professional development hoursA handful of live Zoom hours per certification8–16 hours
ScopeThe complete lifecycle — staying union-free, campaigns, contract administration, arbitration, bargaining, strikesBargaining and contract administrationSelected topics by certification trackOne topic
Contract administrationA full week inside a fictional union plant, on a full sample contractCoursework, onlineSelected topicsRarely this deep
Simulation depthFour multi-day simulations across the certificate, each scored and debriefedAbout a day and a half of bargaining simulationA virtual mock arbitrationCase discussion
Who teachesPracticing LRI consultants who do this work daily, plus guest counsel and arbitratorsAcademic facultyAcademic facultyVaries
Cohort size12, at a 1:6 instructor ratioOpen enrollmentOpen enrollment20–100+

Based on program information published by each provider as of July 2026. Programs change; we update this comparison when they do.

From the cohort

"[Participant quote — ideally the moment they realized a favor they grant every week at their own plant is a past practice in the making.]"

[Name], [Title], [Company]

Taught by practitioners

Every instructor is an active LRI consultant who administers contracts, handles grievances, and sits at bargaining tables for real clients. Led by Phillip B. Wilson, CEO of LRI Consulting Services and author of Managing the Union Shop — the book this week's past-practice doctrine comes from, assigned as pre-work — and Left of Boom.

Apply

Apply for the founding cohort

Twelve seats, November 16–20, 2026, in Tulsa. Founding cohort participants receive discounted pricing in exchange for detailed feedback. Take Week 3 on its own and earn the LRI Certificate in Contract Administration, or apply it toward the full Certificate in Applied Labor Relations.

Apply for the founding cohort

Or call 800-888-9115 · lrionline.com/institute

Multi-seat enrollment is available for organizations sending a plant leadership team. We are pursuing SHRM professional development credits and HRCI recertification credit for the program.

Before you arrive
1About four hours of pre-work, assigned three weeks out: the sample contract read cover-to-cover with a guided annotation worksheet, plus the assigned Managing the Union Shop chapters.
2An eight-scenario contract self-check. Ungraded, and deliberately revealing about which lens you default to — the contract, or fairness.
3A short alignment conversation with your manager: which contract problems matter most at your facility.
4Bring your own CBA. Thursday's audit and the between-session assignment run on it.